Carine Roitfeld: 'I want to show fashion can be a nice world, if a bit crazy'

Carine Roitfeld, super stylist, former editor of French Vogue and now a global director of Harper's Bazaar, has spent decades reinventing the way we wear clothes. Now the subject of a documentary, she talks to Eva Wiseman about becoming a grandmother, fashion politics and why she's sharing her trade secrets

Carine Roitfeld: 'Anna Wintour and I are very different; she's the biggest politician in fashion, but I respect her.' Photograph: Patrick Swirc for the Observer

Carine Roitfeld smells of matches and burned vanilla, like the end of a birthday party. She orders a coffee in the elegant café next door to her Paris apartment, and when I tell her how good she smells she leans forward and says: "That is the most wonderful thing I could hear today." She is working on her own perfume, she explains. This is a test scent – "Still too sweet, no?" – and as we talk it fades into the café air, sugaring the things she says.

Roitfeld, the former editor of French Vogue, founder of her own magazine CR, recently appointed global fashion director of Harper's Bazaar and Tom Ford's "ideal woman", is, at 58, the star and subject of a new documentary, Mademoiselle C. Directed by Fabien Constant over the nine months before publication of CR, issue one, it is a portrait of a woman in absolute, joyful control. She is one of the most renowned stylists in the world, famous for both her oiled-up imagery and her chic life – there is a website called IwanttobeaRoitfeld.com with a drooling gallery of the views from her apartment. A stylist best known for her "porno-chic" aesthetic (she was responsible for pictures including Gucci's controversial ad campaign where the label's logo was shaved into a model's pubic hair), Constant follows her as she becomes a grandmother, and, through fast, intimate interludes with her growing family, documents her new obsession – babies. Instead of the severe woman in suspenders she knew her critics were expecting, CR's cover star was swimsuit model Kate Upton frolicking in fields with piglets and puppies. The theme of the issue was "rebirth".

"I like to surprise people. I try to take risks," she says, holding her espresso with long manicured fingers. She looks like a fan art drawing of Iggy Pop. A glamorous insect. "Like Steve Jobs said: 'Think different!'"

Roitfeld is deadpan and dry. Her humour creeps up on you mid-sentence. She says she agreed to make the film over green tea with Constant. "I was not even drunk yet," she shrugs, "but I said OK." Her supporting cast in Mademoiselle C is made up of the people who have defined fashion's aesthetic for the past 10, 20 years: Tom Ford, Donatella Versace, Karl Lagerfeld (who is shown wheeling Roitfeld's newborn granddaughter around in a pram – "She's cute," he says of the baby, "but she doesn't talk much"). All speak of Roitfeld in revered tones. "They don't play games, these people; they are honest," she says. "So when I see them talking about me I get tears in my eyes. They never told me those things."

Mario Testino emailed me to add his compliments: "Carine has been an instrumental collaborator of mine. With Tom Ford, we seemed to have a perfect fit. I especially remember the fun we had when we worked on an editorial for The Face magazine in 1996. We decided to photograph her male assistant, Benjamin, as the French writer Françoise Sagan. That summed up a lot of our work together – not only fun but unexpected, striving for new experiences." Benjamin was so affected by the shoot that he continues to wear women's clothes to this day.

Those interviewed on camera include Christian Restoin, Roitfeld's partner of 30 years (the owner of shirt company Equipment), her daughter Julia, and her son Vladimir. "They never tell me 'I love you', but I know it. When people hear my son say I'm a MILF… well, I hope they understand our sense of humour. We work seriously but don't take ourselves seriously. This is important in fashion. It's not all a business, it's a dream."

It's a dream. She repeats this many times over the course of the morning, the Seine grumbling behind us, the sun rising hotter and whiter. Fashion is a dream she is trying to make a reality. "Sometimes today in fashion the dream is lost," she sighs, discussing the pressures that brands are under to make "It bags", "It shoes". "For some the dream is broken. Designers are artists – you see people like McQueen, and you understand how difficult it can be if you aren't strong, if you don't have support."

Roitfeld says she never knows what to write under "Profession" at customs. She is a stylist – that most cryptic of careers, the person between the photographer and the model. She is not an artist, she stresses, but she loves artists. And her relationships with them, the photographers especially, appear impressively robust, despite many of them being tested by her leaving Vogue. Upon the announcement of her new magazine, the New York Post reported that Condé Nast International CEO Jonathan Newhouse ordered photographers including Testino and Craig McDean not to work with her. "Everyone is buzzing about the Condé roadblocks against Carine," a source told the newspaper. "People love Carine but are more frightened of the Condé Nast machine."

"It's difficult to find a new family in fashion, but that's what I had to do," Roitfeld says. Rather than try and persuade them to shoot for CR, she decided to promote younger talent. "I am very 'family', even in my work – to make a new one was the most important thing. Many photographers couldn't come, but this is business. It's OK." She says this in a way that suggests it's not entirely OK. That it hurt. "I still work with them in advertising, still invite them to my parties. You can't feel sad – I am not bitter. The positive things are that it pushed me to find new people. This makes me very happy. All these young people give great energy to the photo shoots. They keep me young."

However much she enjoys discovering new talent, when she talks about the few established artists that stuck with her, her face softens. Bruce Weber is her "big hero, because he is over politics. I have no money for contracts, so I leave the door open. Bruce is happy to work with us because he can do things with me he can't do with other people. Karl [Lagerfeld] is the same. My talent, maybe, is to push people in other directions. To discover themselves." Explaining why he decided to shoot for CR, Weber tells me: "Working with Carine is like being on a roller coaster of thrills, especially when it turns upside down. It always turns right-side up in the end."

There is something about Carine Roitfeld. Something that draws you in. She is a still point in a turning world. Partly it's the voice, deep and measured, in the broken English she learned from reading David Bowie lyrics in her Paris youth. "Life on Mars, you know? I read the back of the record again and again." Partly, maybe, it's that Paris-ness, that riskless sophistication. Partly it's her work, which reflects the generous bonds she has with her team, and her past as a teenage model. "Always in pictures there is something of me," she says.

When she works with Mario Testino and Tom Ford, "I tell them about a woman. Some things we do all the time that they don't know about. You teach them that a woman, she plays with the ends of their hair. She bites her nails. She crosses her legs 20 times. I give them the trick of the woman. I show a bit of myself on the girl in the picture."

And partly it's her family, which lurks at the core of all her stories. She says she's too superstitious to marry Christian, because if they never marry they can never divorce, and despite her schedule – she lives in Paris but works in New York – their relationship appears vital to her sanity, her creativity. "He's always behind me. He gives me my best ideas. And he's good at telling me the truth. When you get a bit well known," she explains, "you always look gorgeous, your ideas are always genius – he tells me when I look horrible, when I make a mistake. I'm very happy with this life."

‘I am very “family”’: with her children and partner – Vladimir, Christian Restoin and Julia. Photograph: Rex

This life is now centred around her granddaughter Romy. "Becoming a grandmother brought me back to the things I forgot to love. Nature. Playing. Seeing animals. A new way of looking. A rejuvenation. A cycle of life – things come back to you. The details." She gestures out of doors towards the clouds, the trees. "You see? I didn't know her," she says of Romy, "but I loved her at first glance." In Mademoiselle C, there is a touching (if telling) scene in her daughter's hospital room, where Roitfeld worries about the rules of carrying a baby when wearing heels.

"When you work in fashion it can be a bit superficial, about clothes and beauty. It's not the real world. It's important to let it back in, to appreciate it again," she smiles. "It is so easy to forget when you're in your golden cage. These important things in life. You are less selfish than you might become in this world of fashion." She pushes her hair away from her charcoal-rimmed eyes. "My granddaughter is never going to tell me I'm gorgeous – I am there just to make her happy. The film is dedicated to her – maybe in some years she will see it. See Julia pregnant, and us making the issue about rebirth, us in the hospital. Her. My obsession."

"There are no boundaries between Carine's personal life and her work," says Constant, the director, "and this has affected mine. In a very good way. Carine was obsessed with Julia being pregnant. And suddenly her full vision of the world changed, and at the end it happened that her granddaughter Romy is, if not the main character, the one around whom the full movie turns. And I didn't expect this." Upon release, Constant's film is sure to be compared with TheSeptember Issue, the 2009 documentary about American Vogue. But while both provide clean windows into the fashion industry – behind the rails, beyond the images – Mademoiselle C is a much more personal portrait.

While Constant admired The September Issue, he says: "I like to think my movie is kind of the opposite. Carine is more into creation, whereas Anna Wintour is more into politics." The differences between Roitfeld and Wintour are stark. But, having worked with her, Roitfeld says the two understand each other well. "We are very different, yes; she's the biggest politician in fashion, but I respect her. She can be very nice – she invited my kids for lunch when they first arrived in New York, which, you see, is a mother's way of thinking. When people say she looks mean, well, I think she is protecting herself. And sometimes you become what people think you are." Roitfeld clicks her nails on the sunglasses that rest on the table and raises her heavy eyebrows. "She wears black glasses, and I know, when I start to wear them, it's as a mask. I don't judge."

Roitfeld's work has traditionally been a combination of people, props and dirty ideas. The clothes come second. "I prefer the woman to the clothes," she maintains. "I prefer someone to say I look beautiful than to ask what I'm wearing." Her ideas happen in airport lounges. "Sometimes the worst looks give me the best ideas. I learn it's not bad to put heels with jogging bottoms. Flowers with checks. I am the observatrice – I always keep looking. Not judging." She looks at me for a second longer than is comfortable (not judging, I tell myself, not judging) and points at the pattern on my blue and white dress. "This, it reminds me of ceramics. Mosaic. It gives me an idea for another shoot." Next to us, a young waitress is preparing a table for lunch; her wrists jangle with silver and plastic. Roitfeld whispers: "Like this. The wristbands you get at nightclubs next to all the bracelets? It's always the details that give me the ideas. It's fun to play with fashion because it is a fantasy. Each morning you dress to become a different woman. Fashion helps."

Head to head: a meeting with Stephen Gan, president of Fashion Media. Photograph courtesy of Way to Blue

Talking to Roitfeld is a calming way to spend a morning. She charms the waiters. She is generous with her time. She talks about fashion in a way that feels inclusive, despite the fact we know it is often the absolute opposite. She has few rules and even fewer regrets. She will never use cigarettes in her photos ("Even though I still love the smell of tobacco on fingers"), or violence, or drugs, and she will "never ask a young model to be sexy. Only people who have a sex life." But her privilege, she says, is that fashion moves so fast that: "If you make an error, it is forgotten the next month." Some, who objected to her shoot with Lara Stone in blackface or her semi-nude story with very thin models, have loudly and articulately disagreed, but she waves off the idea of regrets.

Her intentions have always been good, Roitfeld maintains. She moves on. Forward. "To make things for the first time keeps you young," she says – Lagerfeld taught her this. "He always says: 'Madame Roitfeld, you can do whatever you want as long as you are first.' He was first to make the bridge [between high street and high fashion] with his H&M collection. So if H&M asked me to do the same, I would say no. But, for example, when Bazaar asked me to be global editor, over 30 countries, I said yes. I was first."

Her reach, today, is wide and broad: 11 million people will see her stories for Bazaar, traditionally Vogue's main rival. Do her old colleagues see this as a declaration of war? A sharp kick in the shins? "Ah, there was a time when Bazaar was huge, and now Vogue is bigger, but nothing is forever. If they feel it's a kick then that is great, because people respect when you're doing good things. Even if they'd prefer I was doing good things for them..." And with this new burst of fame, I wonder how it feels to move in front of the camera. To become a celebrity herself. "If people recognise me in airports I feel so stupid, but it makes me happy, too. Because fashion changes every six months, you have to enjoy your moment, and maybe this is mine."

She pauses for a second. "I am not a celebrity. I work with celebrities, and it is very difficult. When a celebrity wears a dress it's good for business, so brands fight for the red carpet. Me? I don't like it, because fashion becomes a job about dressing celebrities. And it's a bit boring. Plus, if you sit next to someone like Rihanna at a show it's great, but you know you will be photographed as the wallpaper." She shrugs, leaning in, and once again I smell her perfume, deeper now. Smokier.

"I hope in Mademoiselle C people don't think I'm too 'me me me'. I hope it shows that fashion can be a nice world, if a bit crazy. I hope it shows you can be a mother in fashion, and that friendships are possible." She drains her coffee and smiles shyly, her teeth very white against her brown skin. As we stand to say goodbye, she winks at me. "I have a lot of tricks I've learned," she says. "And now it's time to share them."

Mademoiselle C is released on 20 September and available on DVD and download from 28 October